Power plants typically produce peak power within a single prescribed operating range. This range is a design specification and invariably operation outside it is undesired. In instances requiring high power production, performance while underloaded is a secondary consideration and often the inefficiencies associated therewith are written off, as negligible in some instances such as wherein underloaded conditions are only encountered at the beginning and end of a long cycle. In some applications, the upper loading range can be an order of magnitude, or more, higher than the underloaded range. It is the inventor's understanding that the prior art is insufficient in offering a single power plant offering plural optimal operating ranges wherein the ranges are widely disparate in nature and wherein the power plant and the system comprised thereof are adequately small, lightweight, and simple.
Hybrid systems have shown to be, thus far, the most efficient method of operating machinery, particularly vehicles. However, hybrid systems inherently incorporate multiple modules, each with its corresponding mass, volume, and complexity. Flywheels and batteries can be as massive as the prime movers they complement. In an effort to design purely complementary systems, the prime mover is constructed to be as small and light as possible, and the volumetric flow of combustion gases therethrough restricted to as little as possible, for reasons known to practitioners in the art. The maximum output is limited in such cases to the sum of energy stored and energy from the prime mover. Too often this is far insufficient, leaving industry with no non-hybrid choice but to waste considerable energy using a large engine to operate in the underloaded state, or fit a single piece of machinery with two prime movers. The hybrid solutions utilized to obviate these wasteful scenarios are complex and inordinately cumbersome. Although in certain applications theoretical optimizations of energy can be reached, the resulting masses and sizes of the resulting machines are simply out of consideration in many fields of endeavor.
Specifically in dealing with high-power hybrid systems, a not uncommon example is the combination of an energy-storage mechanism with a turbine. Complexity and additional mass and size result from efforts to selectively engage one to the other, and both and/or one to the driven means. Also, considerable energy is wasted in the intermittent starting from standstill of the turbine. The most glaring drawback, however, is the fact that there are necessarily entailed three means; one for energy creation, one for energy storage, and one for energy transmission. In many uses this does not matter much, for the machinery that use the devices are slow, stationary, and/or off-road, such that size is not of issue, and, as mentioned, they are hybrid, such that energy put into acceleration of the superfluous mass is reclaimed during deceleration. However, there is still felt a need in the art for an equivalent system that is lighter, smaller, and faster.